Category: News

Allen & Overy has advised Lamda Hellix on its sale to Digital Realty subsidiary Interxion. Linklaters advised the buyer on the deal. 

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. 

Digital Realty is a provider of data center, colocation, and interconnection services. According to Allen & Overy, ‘through its PlatformDIGITAL, the company provides customers methodology for scaling digital business and efficiently managing data gravity challenges. According to the firm, “the acquisition further enhances Digital Realty’s global footprint, which spans more than 700 connectivity providers in over 280 data centers across 22 countries.”

Lamda Hellix is an Athens-headquartered carrier-neutral colocation provider. The company offers cloud and colocation services while also serving as a hub connecting telecoms, customers, and partners. 

According to Allen & Overy, “Lamda Hellix’s management team will remain with the company, including its founder and current CEO and Chairman Apostolos Kakkos, who will continue to oversee operations in the region.” 

The Allen & Overy team was led by London-based Partner Will Samengo-Turner, who was assisted by Senior Associate Eimear Coady.

Linklaters’ Warsaw-based team consisted of Partner Daniel Cousens, Managing Associate Christopher Quinn, and Senior Associate Klaudia Owsianka, among others.

Editor’s note: After this article was published, Zepos & Yannopoulos announced that it had advised Lamda Helix as well. The firm’s team included Partner Athina Skolarikou and Senior Associate Antonis Giannakodimos.

DLA Piper has advised the PORR construction company on the sale of all its shares in Stal-Service to the Celsa Huta Ostrowiec steel plant in Poland. Linklaters reportedly advised Celsa Huta Ostrowiec.

PORR is an international construction group that was established over 150 years ago. PORR’s core business areas are infrastructure, cubature, and railroad construction, as well as construction engineering, power construction, and hydro-technical construction.

Stal-Service is a producer of reinforcing with customers in Poland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Norway.

DLA Piper’s team in Warsaw included Co-Managing Partner Krzysztof Kycia, Partners Jakub Domalik-Plakwicz and Agnieszka Lechman-Filipiak, Counsel Mateusz Zalenski, Senior Associates Anna Chrabota-Bajson Miroslaw Calka, and Szymon Sakowski, Associate Michal Kuratowski, and Junior Associate Bartosz Kuziola.

Editor’s note: After this article was published, Linklaters confirmed that it had advised Celsa Huta Ostrowiec on the deal. The firm’s team included Partners Marcin Schulz, Janusz Dzianachowski, and Malgorzata Szwaj, Managing Associates Jakub Dabrowski and Monika Krzyszkowska-Dabrowska, Senior Associates Magdalena Szewczyk, Krzysztof Gorny, Jakub Wozniak, and Szymon Sieniewicz, Associates Zuzanna Lipska, Anna Laszczyk, Barbara Wanat, Joanna Koterbska, and Lukasz Burakowski, Junior Associates Ada Zahorodna, Ryszard Jamka, and Lawyer Katarzyna Grodzka.

Working pro bono, White & Case has successfully represented a Crimean applicant in his request for asylum in the United States.

According to White & Case, in 2012 the unnamed asylum-seeker — who the firm identifies only as “M.I.” — was a medical student in Crimea when he was attacked and beaten unconscious by members of what the firm calls a “sophisticated anti-gay group,” at least one of whom was wearing a police uniform, then received poor medical treatment for his “severe injuries” once doctors discovered he was HIV positive.

Several months after the initial attack, the firm reported, M.I. “was approached by men in police uniforms who demanded that he pay them money or they would hurt him again, and would tell his university that he was gay. M.I. paid large sums of money to his persecutors over several years. But the threats never stopped.”

In 2014, having completed his medical coursework, M.I. fled Crimea, seeking refuge in the United States. 

According to White & Case, “through a referral from its longtime pro bono Partner Whitman-Walker Health … David Courchaine and John Dalebroux, associates in White & Case’s Washington, DC office, volunteered to represent M.I. pro bono before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) Asylum Office in Arlington, Virginia.” In addition, the firm reports, “to help build M.I.’s case for asylum and prepare him for USCIS interviews, Courchaine and Dalebroux assembled an asylum team, which included Associates Sadie Pulliam, Claire Leonard, and Alexander Andresian from the Washington, DC office and Associate Vivake Prasad from White & Case’s New York office.”

Finally, after many years, the firm reports, “in July 2020, two years after M.I.’s second interview, USCIS granted his request for asylum in the United States.”

“I am proud of the asylum team’s tenacity and determination in this long and challenging representation,” said Courchaine, who has previously helped to win asylum for four separate LGBT+ pro bono clients. 

According to White & Case, “now 35 and secure, M.I. plans to finish earning his M.D and to practice medicine in his new home country, free from fear of being forced to return to the threats and violence that had nearly ended his life.”

Cobalt has advised the Latvian private healthcare group Repharm on the acquisition of a network of MediCA, Kardiolita, and 33 other clinics from UAB CGP Management, and their subsequent merger with InMedica, a network of medical clinics indirectly managed by the INVL Baltic Sea Growth Fund.

The transaction remains subject to regulatory approval.

INVL Baltic Sea Growth Fund is managed by Lithuania’s INVL Asset Management, which controls 70% of UAB InMedica shares through UAB BSGF Sanus. InMedica is a network of primary health care institutions providing services in various cities of the country. The InMedica group currently consists of 22 clinics.

Cobalt’s team included Partner Elijus Burgis and Senior Associates Julija Aleska and Deimante Pagiriene.

Cobalt did not reply to our inquiry on the matter.

CMS Sofia and Doklestic Repic & Gajin have advised Balkantel on its participation as part of a consortium with the Trace Group in a EUR 60 million modernization and rehabilitation project of the Nis-Brestovac railway in southern Serbia. The Trace Group was advised by Eurolex Bulgaria and Andric Law Office.

According to CMS, “the project is financed by the EU and co-financed by the Ministry of Finance of Serbia and includes both the design and construction phases.“ 

This marks the second railway-related project CMS advised the Balkantel/Trace Group consortium on, following its successful participation in a tender for a EUR 45 million railway public procurement project in Bulgaria (as reported by CEE Legal Matters on July 27, 2020). 

CMS Sofia’s team consisted of Managing Partner Kostadin Sirleshtov and Associates Borislava Pokrass and Diyan Georgiev. 

Doklestic Repic & Gajin’s team included Partners Slobodan Doklestic and Milos Pandzic. 

Eurolex Bulgaria’s team was reportedly led by Stoyan Barzakov. 

Andric Law Office’s team was reportedly helmed by Managing Partner Luka Andric.

CMS has advised Green Source GmbH and its Solar Partners subsidiary on the EUR 66 million financing provided by Kommunalkredit Austria for the construction of power plants in Hungary. Wolf Theiss advised Kommunalkredit Austria.

The signing of project documentation for the EUR 66 million financing took place at the end of July 2020 and financial closing occurred in mid-August.

According to CMS, “the project concerns the construction of eight solar power plants with a total peak capacity of 65 MW by five Hungarian project companies owned by Solar Partners.”

Green Source, which was founded in Vienna in 2006, specializes in the development, construction, operation, and operations and maintenance of ground-mounted photovoltaic plants in Central and Eastern Europe for private and institutional investors. To date, Green Source has developed, constructed, and sold 27 projects with a total capacity of over 332 MW.

CMS’s team included, in Vienna, Partners Johannes Trenkwalder, Stefan Paulmayer, Thomas Hamerl, Guenther Hanslik, and Marcell Clark, Senior Associate Lisa Oberlechner, and Associates David Kohl, Linda Marterer, Christoph Birner, Marie-Christine Lidl, Marco Selenic, and Vanessa Horaceck; in Hungary, Managing Partner Erika Papp, Senior Consultant Arpad Lantos, Senior Associates Peter Deak, Zsofia Hermann, and Zoltan Poronyi, and Associates Nora Devenyi and Zita Gressai; in Slovakia, Managing Director Oliver Werner, Senior Associate Barbora Korenecova, and Associates Natalia Janoskova and Terezia Rusnakova; and in Germany, Partners Antje Becker and Dorothee Janzen and Senior Associate Sonja Ebert.

Wolf Theiss’s team included, in Austria, Partner Andreas Schmid, Counsel Marika Lomashvili, Senior Associate Georg Harer, and Associate Victoria Mohler; in Hungary, Partner Laszlo Kenyeres, Counsel Melinda Pelikan, Senior Associate Zoltan Bodnar, and Associates Matyas Palosi, Andras Mozsolits, Zsombor Vancza, and Laszlo Lovas; and in Slovakia, Counsel Bruno Stefanik and Associate Dalibor Palaticky.

Both Poland’s Kochanski & Partners (on behalf of Poland’s Muszynianka Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnoscia) and the Bratislava office of Squire Patton Boggs (on behalf of the Slovak Republic) are claiming victory in a dispute involving the Agreement on the Protection and Promotion of Investments between the Slovak Republic and the Republic of Poland.

According to the Slovakian Ministry of Finance, “the subject of the dispute was the issue of the use of mineral water from springs located in the Slovak village of Legnava, which was to be transported by pipeline to Poland and bottled in the Polish village of Muszyna. [Muszynianka Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnoscia] claimed compensation from the Slovak Republic for almost EUR 170 million on the ground that the amendment to the Constitution of the Slovak Republic regulating the export of bulk water (Article 4 (2) of the Constitution of the Slovak Republic [which was enacted in 2014]) was contrary to international law.”

The tribunal, seated the arbitration in Switzerland and held a full merits hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague in January 2019, applying UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules.

According to the Squire Patton Boggs report, “in its decision, the tribunal found that the Constitutional Amendment bears a reasonable relationship with the legitimate public policy objectives of water preservation, public health and regulation of the use of natural resources. It further held that the Constitutional Amendment was not discriminatory, was not targeted at Muszynianka and was proportional. Consequently, the tribunal found that any breach was inconsequential because it did not cause any loss to GFT Slovakia or Muszynianka, as further permits would have been required that could not have been obtained before the issuance of the Constitutional Amendment and would have been prohibited by the Constitutional Amendment after its enactment.” According to the firm, “the tribunal, therefore, held there was no causation and rejected Muszynianka’s claim for damages in its entirety.”

Kochanski & Partners reported the results quite differently. According to the Polish firm, “the Arbitral Tribunal … decided that Slovakia had violated international law to the detriment of the Polish company.” According to the firm, “the Arbitral Tribunal held that it had jurisdiction over the dispute and dismissed all jurisdictional objections of Slovakia and the European Commission. For the first time ever, the Investment Tribunal found the intra-EU agreement on the termination of BITs as being without prejudice to the pending proceedings, with Muszynianka retaining the right to having its investment protected. This is of key importance for investors of Member States that have initiated proceedings under intra-EU BITs. Furthermore, the Tribunal dismissed all objections of Slovakia to the admissibility of Muszynianka’s claims, including the objection of alleged illegality of the investment project. The Tribunal thus confirmed the cross-border activity planned by Muszynianka as being legally permissible prior to the entry into force of the amendments to the Slovak Constitution.” In addition, the firm reported, “the Tribunal … [stated] that the administrative proceedings concerning Muszynianka ‘were conducted in willful disregard of Slovak administrative law and the transparency expected from State authorities.’ In the Tribunal’s view, the Slovak authorities’ action against Muszynianka ‘was in breach of the fair and equitable treatment standard.’ The Tribunal also found that such conduct was in breach of the non-impairment standard.”

Although Kochanski & Partners conceded that “the Tribunal held … that the Constitutional Amendment banning the cross-border transport of water via pipelines did not violate the BIT,” and “thus … did not award damages for the BIT violations,” it maintained that “considering the essential part of the award and [our] client’s reaction, we believe this to be a success and are now considering the legal remedies that may enable our client to obtain satisfaction of his recognized claims.”

Squire Patton Boggs’ team included Bratislava Managing Partner Tatiana Prokopova, Prague-based Partners Rostislav Pekar and Maria Polakova, US–based Partners Stephen Anway, Mark Stadnyk, Raul Manon, and David Alexander, and Perth-and-London-based Partner Alexis Martinez, as well as Bratislava-based Senior Associate Eva Cibulkova, and Associates Aleksandra Dziki and Jakub Kamenicky.

Kochanski & Partners’ team was led by Partner Marek Jezewski, the firm’s Head of Dispute Resolution.